August 12, 2013 AT 1:24 pm

Code to Joy: The School for Poetic Computation Opens

New computer science graduates jumped by nearly 30 percent last year, and a bevy of professionally oriented programming courses have erupted to teach start-up ready skills like, “How to Build a Mobile App.” So it makes sense that programming is widely considered to be this generation’s“Plastics” — a surefire professional skill that can bring success, security and maybe even stock options.
But fewer people talk about how programming and engineering can be used for pleasure, beauty or surprise.

Now, four people with a variety of backgrounds — in computer science, art, math and design — have banded together in Brooklyn to rethink how programming is taught.

Their school, the School for Poetic Computation, is intended to be more passionate, free-spirited and curiosity-driven than other kinds of private coding academies that have cropped up in the last few years, like New York’s Hacker School or Seattle’s Code Fellows, which offer practical classes with an aim to get their students a job after graduation.